Michigan Policy Circle
August 2, 2004

Strange Bedfellows Don’t Exactly Deviate from the Norm
By Melissa Riba, Senior Consultant

Odd couplings and strange bedfellows are not new in politics. A lot of attention has been paid lately to the somewhat tawdry fling between Ralph Nader and the Michigan Republican Party. The issue? The Michigan GOP collected signatures on behalf of Ralph Nader to secure his place on the presidential ballot in November. The Michigan Democratic Party is crying foul, calling the maneuver “unethical,” and demanding that Nader reject the GOP’s assistance and remove himself from the ballot. (Nader has politely declined.) The real issue, of course, is that the Democrats fear that Nader will siphon votes from their candidate, Senator John Kerry. The Republicans, naturally, are banking on just this, and hope to boost the odds that President Bush will win Michigan in 2004.

Third parties have been around since this country began and politics, above most everything else, is about winning. This latest affair smells like politics as usual—or is it? There is evidence that the “Nader effect” may not be working exactly as Republicans hope and Democrats fear. In fact, it may work against each party’s candidate equally.

Thus inspired by the image of the newest pair of strange bedfellows (Betsy and Ralph) and the uproar that this rather awkward arrangement has momentarily caused, I venture the following observations:

• Conventional wisdom holds that Nader hurts Kerry by siphoning off votes by people who feel left out by the mainstream Democratic Party. That’s the sentiment that Howard Dean tapped into when he gained notoriety by calling the Democratic National Committee the “Republican wing of the Democratic Party.”
• But discontent with the two mainstream political parties runs both ways. Witness the struggles between more moderate Republicans and their conservative brethren. Could Nader siphon votes away from Bush as well? Some additional food for thought:
  • In 2000, Nader’s presence on the ballot did not result in a loss of votes only for Gore. Post-election polling conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Inc. demonstrates that among those who voted for Nader, 38 percent would have voted for Gore had Nader not been in the race, 25 percent would have voted for Bush, and 31 percent either would not have voted or would have voted for some other candidate.
  • National and Michigan polls show that Nader has no impact on the point spread between Bush and Kerry. The race is a statistical dead heat between Bush and Kerry with both gaining equally when Nader is not on the ballot:
    • Polling data from Epic-MRA conducted in early July shows that among Michigan voters, Kerry and Bush are neck and neck, separated by just three percentage points.
    • When voters are asked to indicate their choice, 43 percent say they would vote for Bush, 46 percent say they would vote for Kerry, and 3 percent say they would vote for Nader. With Nader not in contention, Bush and Kerry each gain two percentage points, and the spread remains the same (Bush gets 45 percent and Kerry gets 48 percent).
  • Furthermore, Nader is not affiliated with any one political party or limited by its platform. It is conceivable that he could try to be all things to everyone who feels marginalized by the major parties, and peel votes away from the fringes of both the Democrats and the Republicans. For example, in June 2004, Nader was featured in a cover story of The American Conservative (June 21, 2004), the publication of record for self-professed “authentic” conservatives started by Pat Buchanan as a reaction against the neo-conservative Bush Administration. In the interview, Nader makes a case for himself with Buchanan’s conservative audience by attacking the “corporatism” of the Republican Party and drawing parallels between disaffected conservatives and progressives alike. While it is hard to know how appealing Nader can be to this audience, it demonstrates that he is trying to reach out beyond his traditional progressive base.
• So what? While the numbers we are talking about here are very small, there is still reason for both parties to pay attention. The 2004 election is promising to be just as close as 2000 and will be played out on a state-by-state basis. Remember that Florida decided the electoral balance of power by no more than 500 votes. Conventional political wisdom holds that a candidate must play to the margins in order to win (thus all the concern over the “undecideds” and “swing voters”). When it comes to Nader, it may serve both the GOP and the Democrats well to heed this wisdom.

View other Michigan Policy Circle documents